1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology that facilitates the joining of flexible printed circuit boards using position fixing couplings integrally formed on the printed circuit boards.
2. Description of the Related Art
A device, such as a camera, uses a flexible printed circuit board as a circuit for controlling various electronic components in the camera. Flexible printed circuit boards joinable to other flexible printed circuit boards are known. For that purpose, there are provided a plurality of terminals on the flexible printed circuit boards.
In this case, in the joining of flexible printed circuit boards, the boards must be positioned so that the corresponding terminals line up correctly, and then the flexible printed circuit boards are connected by soldering.
However, conventional flexible printed circuit boards are not provided with couplings for positioning formed on the flexible printed circuit boards. Therefore, fixing the positions of two conventional flexible printed circuit boards when joining them is left in the hands of skilled professionals who perform the soldering. More concretely, when two flexible printed circuit boards are joined, a skilled professional must subtly adjust the position of the flexible printed circuit boards so that the terminals on respective flexible printed circuit boards come into contact with each other, and must also hold the two flexible printed circuit boards in the hands until the soldering operation is finished. This sequence of operations is labor intensive, and the precision of the positioning is not high. In particular, in cases where soldering is required in a location on the flexible printed circuit boards where it is difficult to perform soldering and positioning, the above-mentioned drawbacks are most noticeable.
In addition, due to restrictions in the workplace and the workspace, there are many cases where the circuit boards must be installed in the camera or other device after the actual soldering of the terminals to join the flexible printed circuit boards has already been performed. This also causes constraints in the assembling and installing operations.